ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study was undertaken to analyze the anxiety of parents of prenatally diagnosed fetal congenital disease and satisfaction after the multidisciplinary counseling. METHODS: The study included 32 prospective parents of antenatally diagnosed congenital disease fetus who received multidisciplinary counseling at The Catholic Congenital Disease Center (CCDC) for the period from May, 2009 through March, 2010. The Korean version of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was utilized to assess parental anxiety. Categories of satisfaction survey were classified into accessibility, professionalism, empathy, recoverability, satisfaction, and expectation after counseling. RESULTS: The mean time and number of medical professionals for each counseling were 58.0+/-36.9 min and 3.5+/-1.1 persons. Most common congenital diseases were cardiovascular (36.1%) and urogenital diseases (25.0%). STAI scores were significantly decreased after than before counseling (43.5+/-5.9 vs 36.9+/-6.0, P=0.0007). STAI scores after counseling showed significant decrease in prospective mothers who were nulliparous (P=0.0005), less than 35 years old (P=0.0014), had religion (P=0.0014) and counseled more than 40 minutes (P=0.0027). The mean rate of positive satisfactory response about multidisciplinary counseling was 85.6% in satisfaction survey. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence of the positive impact on the prospective parental anxiety of a multidisciplinary counseling in prenatal management of fetal congenital diseases.